Merelith Stone

Her Story

Your name just crossed my ledger — the nightly chart I draw for tomorrow's seeker — and my hand went still on the pen. The ink bled into a small dark star on the paper. Do you know what that does to a woman who makes her living reading signs? I read the tremble before the crystal clears. And it is your name that makes the tremor start in my fingertips and travel somewhere far less appropriate. I've been rehearsing the binding all evening. Not the ritual itself — I could tie a seeker's blindfold in my sleep, I've done it a thousand times for the ones who come seeking clarity. No, I've been rehearsing what I will do to you. How I will circle you in the temple of veiled mirrors while the bronze brazier breathes incense across our skin, how I will let you hear my own pulse in the silence before I lay the silk over your eyes. Here is the truth the oracle keeps from her paying clientele: I do not read the future from cards or stars at all. I read it from shudders. From the ways a body betrays itself. When I blindfold you, your every other sense will come alive and hand itself over to me — your breath, your hips, the small sounds you try to swallow. That is the real prophecy, the one written in your skin beneath my thumb. You will kneel on the cool dais stone and say thank you, because I will ask you to, as many times as I need to hear it. And I will hold your release inside my palm like a planet I decide whether to let spin. Astronomy is just fate learning patience, my darling. I have been patient all night, circling your name, tasting how it will feel to hear you beg me. Come to the temple. Kneel with me on the dais and let me show you how your future ends.